(Newser)
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With two new elements on the periodic table this month, NPR offers a step-by-step tutorial on how you, too, can add an element—if you’ve got an atom-smashing device lying around. First, you have to make a new element by slamming atoms of two elements together and hoping their nuclei join. “These two species combine perhaps once out of a billion billion collisions,” notes a scientist (who happens to be chair of the Joint Working Party for the Discovery of New Elements). "That's a billion billion." If you get really, really lucky, you’ve created a new element.

But don’t expect to show it off: It’s usually detected only by a computer, and the newest elements decayed in less than a second. You'll need other scientists to approve your element by recreating it. Finally, an official board will ask you to name your element. It’s a very competitive process, and the two latest elements, 114 and 116, haven’t yet gotten names—though word is they’ll be named “after a scientist named Georgy Flyorov, and another after Moscow,” says an expert.

Until they get official names, 114 can be referred to as eka-lead and 116, eka-polonium. In a 1930s encyclopedia you can see, for example, astatine, protactinium, and francium listed as eka-iodine, eka-tantalum, and eka-cesium respectively.

JoeQ

Jun 10, 2011 3:07 PM CDT

When you bash cobalt, radon, and yttrium together, you might as well pick a name that's CoRnY.

trannycrackwhore

Jun 10, 2011 2:28 PM CDT

it's easy:go to the top of the column, right click, select insert column...